What watermelon varieties are you growing this year?
gt3corn
13 years ago
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rayrose
13 years agobrookw_gw
13 years agoRelated Discussions
Any varieties from last year that you won't be growing this year?
Comments (6)I had Kelvin Floodlight from 2 different sources and the one I had purchased from a local nursery really looked nothing like the tuber I had received in a trade. The flower never looked as full and the petals would often turn brown. I tossed that one. My Candlelight from Swan Island rarely looks as pretty as it does in the catalog. Mostly it looks like dirty yellow but once it awile it throws a nice orange/yellow blend. I don't really love it but I keep planting it every year, probably because it is the first one to bloom every summer and it seems to store very well since I have had that one for years. As for the late bloomers, I plan on starting the biggest AA's in the house in late March. I did that with Show N Tell last year and it was blooming profusely by July. I made a list of the ones I'm going to start early. I don't have room to start them all or I would. As for your Citron Du Cap, I would love to trade you something for that one. I have been eyeing that one for a few years and would like to try it. I have quite a few dahlias in storage and hopefully will have a lot of varities to trade in the spring. If you're interested, you can email me on my member page. Linda...See MoreWhich varieties are you growing this year??
Comments (95)Planted today here in zone 5b, southern New Hampshire. I have raised beds and the next 10 days are forecast warm weather & fair so taking a slight risk. The traditional planting day here is Memorial Day weekend. Brandywine Belgian Giant Yellow Brandywine Beefmaster that's it. No cherry tomatoes at all this year and no early varieties. I have had enough of them. I expect that grape tomatoes will spring up near the compost heap all by themselves. We are down to 30 tomato plants this year so I limited it to large or giant varieties. This is half of what I had last year. The rest of the garden is dedicated to other vegetables including a lot of Asian vegetables. I actually prefer Lemon Boy to the yellow Brandywine but I could not find them this year. Last year I grew Celebrity they were nice shaped fruit, tasted nice and good yield -- but I want something better tasting and more variety. I wanted at least 1 VFN hybrid (Beefmaster) as insurance. The compost that I have been curing for 2 years and carefully sifted is unbelievable I put about 3" of it on the garden last month and every scoop I dig brings up an earthworm....See MoreWhat new varieties have you tried that you will grow again?
Comments (22)I grew a variety of the most talked about heirlooms this year. This was my first time trying anything other than Early Girls and similar varieties. Thanks to all on this forum for getting me out of my early-hybrid rut. I acknowledge that everyone's taste is different, but here's what I observed in my multitude of taste tests this year:. The Brandywine Sudduth had an amazingly smooth, creamy, dense meat. It has been described as almost a buttery texture. That's what I thought when I tasted it. I found the Stump of the World, the Brandywine OTV, and the Brandyboy to be very similar to the B-wine Sudduth in texture; different, but similar, in taste and all VERY GOOD. The OTV sometimes had less smooth texture, almost on the edge of being mealy, dependent on overnight cold temps. Marianna's Peace had a Sudduth-like texture, although a bit less dense and a bit lighter flavor. I liked Marianna's Peace BEST of ALL. The PrudenÂs Purple also had a Sudduth-like texture and the taste was good, but noticeably not as good as those mentioned above. It had the very best taste and texture of all the shorter season tomatoes in my greenhouse, though. My Prudens Purple vines were earlier than my Early Girls and much better tasting, meatier, and with a smoother denser texture. The Neves had a rich meaty texture, more traditional, and not so creamy smooth, but never mealy. It had a very rich, rich, rich tomatoey flavor. It is our favorite for flavor. PRODUCTION The numbers below show my best production numbers so far. My semi-insulated heated greenhouse is still producing: Goliath Hyb.........ÂÂ.12 @ 105oz Neves Azorean Red.......8 @ 104oz Brandywine OTV..........5 @ 88oz Marianna's Peace.....Â. 5 @ 84oz Prudens Purple........Â.. 7 @ 84oz Sophie's Choice.....Â...17 @ 84oz Mortgage Lifter#1....Â17 @ 80oz Mortgage Lifter#2...ÂÂ6 @ 77oz Early Girl Hyb......ÂÂ.16 @ 75oz Brandyboy Hyb........Â...7 @ 75oz Early Goliath Hyb.....Â..8 @ 65oz Stump of the World...Â.3 @ 55oz Brandywine Sudduth......2 @ 45oz Stupice...........ÂÂÂ...25 @ 42oz Next year I will grow MariannaÂs Peace and Neves for taste and production. I will grow some Prudens purple for EARLINESS, to tide us over til the others ripen. I donÂt think I will have space for any "early" hybrids in my garden next year. Happy Growing, Bob-northernlight...See MoreYay! Fibally ripe watermelon! Anyone else grow watermelon in zone 5?
Comments (11)keen101, > Make sure all chance of frost has passed and that the soil has warmed to around 65 degrees. If the soil is cooler than that, it will affect the germination rate of the seeds. I noticed that if it's too cool when they're planted, fewer (if any) seeds sprout, even when it warms up afterward (although somehow seeds can overwinter and still sprout), when it comes to direct-seeding anyhow. Germination in my unheated greenhouse is great for most varieties, as long as it's not too low below freezing outside for the nightly lows. Watermelon generally germinates better than just about anything in the greenhouse (same for okra). I don't start my seeds indoors anymore. I start them in a 6'x5'x3' Strong Camel greenhouse and then transplant them in the spring. My area isn't as cold as most parts of Idaho in the growing season. We get about four months of hot weather (the last part of May, all of June, July, and August, and maybe half of September are generally quite hot and very dry, especially from late June to mid August, sans when we have thunderstorms in early August or so; early May and late September or onward are generally cooler, and sometimes rainy, though; the frost-free growing season is generally from about May 10th to October 10th, but it varies, of course). Things like Armenian cucumbers, and muskmelons, which love the heat do very well here. I don't have problems germinating watermelons, as long as it's warm enough when I direct-seed them. Direct-seeding can work, here, but I seem to get much better results (as in larger fruit) if the plants are a certain maturity before I transplant them (even if I have to transplant them late). The plants get plenty of light in the greenhouse. We get a lot of sun in my region, if there's no shade. Cold and other outdoor conditions can indeed damage young watermelons. I do believe they should probably be transplanted later than tomatoes (although I need to test that in more contexts). I think it's more due to the fact that they're young than that it's cold, though, but cold seems like it's probably a factor, if not a big factor. Watermelon leaves seem to prefer the kind of light they grew with. If you change that light, it seems to stunt the plant to a degree. This probably isn't going to be a noticeable issue with young plants, since I think young leaves are adaptable, but once they get to a certain size, it seems to be a major issue. I have a hypothesis that removing old leaves (not on young seedlings, but on older plants) can help them quite a bit (and can get around the issues people have with starting watermelons too early, wherein they think it's a taproot issue instead). I plan to test that, this year. I probably won't transplant any watermelons until the end of May or so, this year (in previous years, I tried to do it as soon as possible under milk jugs—I think it's probably a better idea just to wait until milk jugs aren't necessary, even though it seems like you're losing time. Fortunately, we have lots of pollinators here. Our neighbors have beehives. I don't see many at all on the tomatoes, but they seem to like the Russian Sage, cantaloupes, sunflowers, squash, and stuff. They're often on the watermelon, too. I don't know that we have issues with few fruits getting pollinated (although we could probably get more), but some watermelons seem to have incomplete pollination, especially if they're first-year watermelons. I mean, the seeds on the blossom end are often not developed. This can result in smaller, less tasty, fruits. Acclimatization seems to help avoid this, whether or not fruits get larger in following years. I'm not sure that it's the fault of the pollinators; it might be something about the climate. With the exception of Red-seeded Citron and maybe Sugar Baby, I've actually had *much* better results if I water watermelons with an oscillating sprinkler or a shower nozzle than if I just water at the base of the plant. It's interesting how results differ. My main challenges with watermelon have been these: * Fruit size tends to be smaller more often * Spider mites (they're everywhere, I've pretty much resigned myself to adapting the plants to deal with them) * Foliar anthracnose and/or alternaria (theseseem to go hand in hand with the spider mites) * Weeds (particularly tall, weedy grasses) I didn't know you were in more similar circumstances, living in the city limits. I guess I assumed there! Sorry. That's cool. I planted the tomatoes about a foot apart when I did about 105 varieties in 2017. I didn't cage any of them. I made sure to separate the smaller plants I knew about from those that would smother them (due to lots of smothering experience in 2015 and 2016). I had them in a long strip of land instead of something closer to a square-shaped piece of land as I had done with about a hundred varieties in 2016 spaced somewhat further apart (and the long strip made for a better and easier harvest, I think, since more plants were on the border, without tomatoes on all sides). I had watermelons, muskmelons, okra, and a few other things in the square-shaped piece of land in 2017. I'll probably put at least tomatoes and other stuff there, this year, and watermelons in a new spot that hasn't been gardened on much, if at all, before. I'm pretty good at making things fit (not just with plants), if I'm allowed to do it. If it were up to me, I'd want to line the western fence in the backyard with 18-gallon moving totes for plant containers, since mostly just weeds grow there anyway. Stuff I've tried growing in the ground directly next to the fence tends to be smaller than usual. I could probably fit 50-60 of them there, all in a line, and lay a drip irrigation hose over them or something. I could grow a lot of peppers. But, that's me dreaming. I'm not the only one who lives here, and I'm not allowed to do whatever I want, even though I've managed to do some pretty interesting (IMO) things. If I had a big field, and could manage to water it, I'd probably grow tens of thousands of watermelon/muskmelon plants and literally every tomato variety I could find, at least three times (including F2+ hybrids). I'd probably let all the tomatoes reseed, too, as well as plant more, both saved and otherwise, the next year. I really wonder what would have happened had I encouraged all the volunteers these last two years instead of trying to pull them up. They were growing like weeds. I was pulling them up most of the season, last year. They were pretty easy to pull up, but there were lots of them, and they kept coming. I eventually stopped, and some of them set fruit. Letting loads of varieties reseed sounds like it could make for some interesting breeding over time. If I were just breeding, rather than trying to get a harvest, I'd probably direct-seed a lot of them, too, for some reasons....See Morewordwiz
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